


Icon of Symmetry

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 18:39:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11583843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: [THIS TAKES PLACE IMMEDIATELY AFTER S5E7. SPOILERS FOR THAT EPISODE.]The worst option would have been staying at DYAD, patiently waiting to see what they would do with their favorite lamb. The second worst option would have been letting Sarah put her arm out through those elevator doors and reach for her – even though she could tell that’s what Sarah was trying to do, what Sarah was aching for in her terrible hero-heart. The third worst option is now running his fingers through Rachel’s hair, even though she has never once let him do that.





	Icon of Symmetry

**Author's Note:**

> YEAH I KNOW...I HATE HIM & I'M SORRY
> 
> [warnings: reference to gore & eye horror, blood, unhealthy relationship with consent issues]

After a while, the pain becomes manageable – in the way everything becomes manageable, which means it isn’t manageable and Rachel pretends. The readjustment to one eye is a sickening, disorienting thing; most of this is because of the familiarity. She hasn’t forgotten how to see this way. She just wanted to pretend that she could leave this behind her.

There are sounds in the back of her throat, still, but that’s fine. She can use them. She fumbles for her phone. _Unh, unh, unh_ says her body as she swipes a bloody thumb over the screen, types in digits. The phone rings. The flourescent lights of her office make hazy swirls across Rachel’s vision – or maybe that’s just the alcohol. Doesn’t matter. None of this, really, is something that matters.

“I need you,” she says into the phone. Her voice is a small, desperate thing. It’s for the game. Unh, unh, unh. It’s all part of the game. The phone drops to the floor, with the shattered remains of the martini glass and the eye and the life that she was supposed to be living now. The last thing Rachel does is fumble for the watch around her neck, rip it off, and drop it to the ground. It isn’t polite enough to break. She notices that, and then unconsciousness takes her.

* * *

She smells tobacco first, before her eyes

oh

before her eye opens. Tobacco and sandalwood, and the dull horror of someone’s hand on her scalp. _Oh_ , what a mistake – but a mistake she’d had to make, certainly, a mistake she chose out of the handful of worse mistakes. The worst option would have been staying at DYAD, patiently waiting to see what they would do with their favorite lamb. The second worst option would have been letting Sarah put her arm out through those elevator doors and reach for her – even though she could tell that’s what Sarah was trying to do, what Sarah was aching for in her terrible hero-heart. The third worst option is now running his fingers through Rachel’s hair, even though she has never once let him do that.

“Don’t,” she says, and her voice comes out sad and small. Her body remembers what it used to be, the last time she only had one eye. Her limbs: tremble.

“Shh,” Ferdinand says. “I’m here, _bijou_. I’ve got you now.”

Well, yes, that’s the problem – but she can’t say that, because she is drunk and because she is bleeding and because she is cracked open all the way down to the little girl who wanted someone to say _I’ve got you_. She drifts.

* * *

She wakes up again. Hotel room bed, generic, reeking of expense that’s valiantly attempting to be tasteful. Small relief: she’s still dressed. The bloodstains are terrible and cracking but they are hers. Rachel sits up – her balance tilts – her head pounds – Rachel sits up. She touches her fingertips to her eye socket. Oh. Gauze. She pulls her fingers back again.

“Westmorland betrayed you, didn’t he,” says a voice from the corner – slinking through the room like a kicked dog gone savage. This was not the worst option, but it was a terrible option. Rachel is aware of this. She turns her head far enough to confront the reality of Ferdinand, sitting in a chair by the bed and watching her sleep. He is slouched low. His tie is undone. Westmorland watched the two of them have sex through the – Rachel stops thinking. Ferdinand has been talking this entire time, telling Rachel that everyone will always betray her except for him. She’s aware of this story. She knows her line.

God, she’d really thought she was done with this.

“I should have known,” she says. She delicately flushes her voice with feeling, just enough to dig for. “I shouldn’t have trusted any of them.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Ferdinand agrees.

“I should have listened to you.”

“Oh, Rachel,” Ferdinand sighs, leaning back in his chair. “Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. What did he do to you? What’s happened to your eye?”

“I need a new one,” Rachel says. She pivots in the bed, wobbles. Good. Fine. There is nothing Ferdinand loves more than when she stumbles, as long as he can catch her before she hits the ground. She tries to slide her feet onto the floor and finds that he’s taken her shoes off. Her feet are small and vulnerable things.

“My network is hiding,” Ferdinand says. “Now that I’ve been… _ousted_.” (Vowels ringing like ribs cracking and then it’s gone.) “I suppose yours won’t be any better, soon as word spreads.”

“It’ll spread rapidly, I’d imagine,” Rachel says. She puts a foot on the ground. “I’m afraid I may have publicly denounced Westmorland.” She puts another foot on the ground.

“That’s my girl,” Ferdinand says warmly. Rachel reminds herself – _again_ – that this was not the worst option. That this was the necessary option.

 

(In a low aching pit in the center of her ribs – the place she went to bury Ethan Duncan, on the walk from the viewing room to Operating Room 1 – she is mourning Westmorland. Selfish. She does it anyways: finding the croonings of love and pride in her chest, cutting them out and dropping them down into the black. She’d wanted him so badly. The reality of him. The idea that she could fight for twenty years and reach, at the end, a reward: a father who wanted her. A father who would stay.

It will be a slow process, probably. Slower than she’d like. Maybe she’ll always hurt when she thinks about him, this man who’d called her _daughter_.

The first, of any of them, to call her _daughter_.)

 

She puts weight on her feet and her body refuses. For a moment Rachel sits, on the edge of the bed, and it all hits her at once. The weight of it bludgeons her – it’s louder than a scream and heavier than a wall. She can’t breathe through it. Bang.

Ferdinand’s hand lands on her shoulder and the shock of disgust pulls her out of it. “Don’t,” she says. “You know the rules.”

“I think the rules have changed,” Ferdinand says, and Rachel closes her

eye and it’s all there in the dark and the panic is just another thing she can throw into it, that pit where everything will have to go if she is going to survive this, it’ll all go in and she’ll be fine and she isn’t scared and she opens her eye again.

“We’ll see,” she says. With Ferdinand’s help, she stands.

“You’ll have to change,” Ferdinand says, frowning at the blood (hers) ( _hers_ ) smeared all down her front. “I didn’t have any clothing in your size prepared. Seems like I should have, hm?”

“I suppose I’ll have to borrow yours,” Rachel says, tugging at her voice to bring it closer to a whisper. Soften the edges, soften the edges – she can recall the voice, she can, young and scared and shattering at the consonants. It’s not her voice. She can rein in the disgust. Into the pit and it’s gone.

Ferdinand’s choppy inhalation says she’s succeeded – and she’s through, she’s in the bathroom, she’s clinging desperately to the doorframe. Oh, the blood she’s lost. Oh, the things she’s lost.

“Will you fetch me something,” she says, and works the muscles of her mouth into a smile. Then she closes the door. Before it’s even fully closed she has locked it and she’s alone. Alone for the first time, really, since—

(since the eye went in? No, before that she was in Susan’s basement. Susan’s cameras. Before that? DYAD hospital room, medical machines and cameras. Before that? Monitors. Before that? The one-way mirror in her bedroom. Before that?

Before that?

Before that?)

—well, in quite some time. She stumbles to the counter, puts her weight on it, looks into the mirror.

Thank god. There she is. Rachel’s breathing slows and smoothes, while she recognizes herself. There she is. It’s all going to be alright now, sweetheart. Shh, shh. She reaches up a hand and fixes her hair, carefully. She knows she’s going to wash it, that fixing it doesn’t matter. That isn’t the point.

Rachel unwraps the gauze from around her head, considers the bloody mess she has made of her face. She touches her fingertips to it. The blood, congealed, comes away on her fingerprints. Hers. _Hers_.

She leans against the counter again and looks at herself, watches the smile crack its way across her face. Slowly, slowly, she starts to laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> I can sell you lies  
> You can't get enough  
> Make a true believer of  
> Anyone, anyone, anyone  
> I can call you up if I feel alone  
> I can feed your dirty mind  
> Like I know, like I know what you want  
> \--"Lies," CHVRCHES
> 
> ...can you believe this is the third fic I've named after this song? Probably you can. Anyways! Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed. :)


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